My brothers are capable men.

Any one of them could have made Preston Calloway regret his existence in a single evening, and no part of me, in the first raw hours, would have grieved it.

That path was right there, the whole time, a door standing open, and it whispered the way it always whispers to the wronged: he hurt you, so hurt him, make it physical, make it match.

But that door, however satisfying, leads to exactly one place, and it is a place beside him.